1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for sending and/or receiving information. More specifically, the present invention relates to a verbal (i.e., through words or symbols either written or spoken) classification system and method for the efficient sending and/or receiving of desired information.
2. Discussion of the Background
The Internet, and more particularly the World Wide Web, is like a landscape expanding at a rapid rate, without a map of its terrain or any organization of the web-sites within that landscape. This lack of infrastructure mapping and organization is a critical problem for both Internet users, who may be unable to access desired information, and web-site proprietors, who may be unable to provide information to a desired audience.
While some web-sites offer indices of the World Wide Web to assist Internet users in accessing desired information, these indices do not permit true granular search capabilities. These indices also do not provide a method for web-site proprietors to offer their web-sites directly to a target audience. These indices are also limited because their ability to track new Internet web-sites is constrained by the resources of the single web-site proprietor that maintains each index.
Internet users may use search engines to locate specific web-sites, but search engines typically rely on over-inclusive, word-based queries that generate undesired results. Thus, Internet users that use search engines may be unable to find the web-site that they are interested in, and web-site proprietors that rely on search engines to attract Internet users must compete with both related and unrelated sites that may be included in search query results. Search engines are also disadvantageous in that they require the Internet user to deduce what keyword or keywords will generate a list of desired web-sites. Finally, because search engines use algorithms that do not connect subject matter with actions, they cannot aid Internet users who wish to locate information based on actions (e.g., “buying” a product rather than “getting information” about it) or modifiers (e.g., information about a subject limited to a specific time period, or to a specific geographic area), or web-sites that wish to receive targeted traffic based on the same criteria.
In addition to a lack of organization, another problem facing the Internet is that the Internet's user community is faceless and difficult to know. Because Internet users are essentially “invisible,” Internet marketers unable to identify a target audience may resort to a practice known as “spamming” in which electronic messages containing marketing information are sent indiscriminately to a large group of Internet users. Not only is spamming inefficient from the Internet marketer's point of view, as there is no way to be sure that electronic messages are reaching an interested audience, it is also highly frowned upon by the Internet's user community, who are forced to contend with the receipt of undesired “spam” messages.
Furthermore, because Internet users are “invisible,” web-site servers cannot present an Internet user with a custom web page or banner advertisement targeted to that user's interests until after the Internet user has accessed a server's web-site. This is because an Internet advertising system can only determine an Internet user's interests by tracking the Internet user's activity after accessing a web-site. This kind of tracking has generated concerns about Internet user privacy.
Finally, because Internet users are “invisible,” market research based on server statistics, cookie tracking and the like, is also limited to tracking usage passively, after a user has arrived at a web-site. Market research on Web behavior and demographics today is also limited in that it uses a segment of the Web via a relatively small sampling. No existing market research services can provide a mass sampling of information about Internet users, web-sites, or can compare or contrast information about Internet users' interests to information about the web-sites they visit.